


Watermelon Seed

by d__T



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: The Eclector, you didn't ask for feelings about space ships but bang bang here's some feelings about space ships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 20:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11169801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d__T/pseuds/d__T
Summary: Sometimes ya gotta pare down to the essentials.





	Watermelon Seed

When Yondu received the Eclector from Stakar, it was already an old and small ship by the current standards. Once a cargo ship, it'd been outfitted with guns to make a threat and maybe even follow through on it. Stakar didn’t really expect to see it or Yondu again, especially after a couple of raids gone horrifically wrong. And then Yondu got his feet under him and rapidly outgrew the Eclector.

Stakar was unprepared. Didn’t have an upgrade in fleet. And Yondu had become emotionally attached to it but wasn’t ready for fleet captaincy yet. So he started building up the Eclector; welding on captured ships and rigging nav and propulsion systems to work together, carving out the insides to make space. There’s about eight years where the Eclector can’t dock in any place with a significant gravity well or even atmosphere because it can’t withstand the stresses.

This atmospheric instability encourages the acquisition of M-ships and drop ships in a big way and for a while they’re all stored in an old cargo ship welded to the belly of the beast. But launch is a damn mess, enough to justify the expenditure on a proper drop hangar and that means gutting the cargo ship until it’s just bay doors and that means stabilizing the Whole Damn Thing.

Yondu eventually settles on wrapping a shell around the mess and trading in the hack job failure prone propulsion system for some bigger, better, and more maneuverable engines. It means ripping half the ship apart, and the century or two of tech agglomerated inside fetches a pretty penny on the salvage market from people desperate for rare parts.

As much as Yondu knows and loves the tale of how each piece was acquired, he maintains the original independent of the rest of the ship. Some little voice telling him he’ll have to cut and run someday.

He knew it would be destructive, blowing away everything he’d built. He did not expect being spit out of the explosion like a watermelon seed to be so freeing.

No longer a Ravager. Back at the beginning again, with new choices to make.


End file.
